Massachussetts Legislature Bans Twitter From Office Computers

from the why? dept

Copycense points us to the bizarre news that the Massachussetts state legislature has decided to ban Twitter from office computers. While Facebook is still allowed, and officials can still tweet via their mobile phones, it's banned on computers. The Legislative Information Services dept is claiming that it's because Twitter is "vulnerable to viruses," but that's fairly bizarre reasoning. Twitter itself is not prone to viruses. Some users may post links to viruses, but that's true on Facebook as well. Besides blocking all of Twitter seems like a sledgehammer approach. While most of the state officials interviewed in the Boston Herald article above seemed upset about the ban and questioned the reasoning behind it, the funniest quote has to come from State Senator Robert Hedlund, who apparently has a list of those darned online time-wasters that he has no self-control over, and wishes were banned:

“There should be more sites that are blocked. We should also ban solitaire, Bejeweled and Farmville.”

Or, you know, Senator Hedlund, you can just stop playing those games...

Edjewkayshun

Perhaps they should focus on hiring people qualified to use the internet in the first place, or even teaching current employees how to use it properly. Its not even close to rocket science (a fairly simple subject by the way). The buried-head-in-sand approach has almost universally failed at almost every level and scale of use; so I have to ask why are we not learning from the past when it comes to attempting to block a form of communication/interaction? Realistically, this "plan" is bound to cause employees to simply find any means they can for subverting the new rules (proxies come to mind as a simple start) and cause new vulnerabilities they could have avoided by just dealing with the technology instead of trying to cripple it.

Re: Edjewkayshun

So do you test the internet qualifications of your state Senators before you vote for them in your state? We really don't 'hire' them and their ability not to fark up their computer is pretty low on the list as far as what most people look for come election time.

Re: Re: Edjewkayshun

I do: if they're over 40, have never previously demonstrated computer use, and have a website w/ even a crappy Joomla layout, chances are they view the internet like a chicken views fire; totally oblivious or living in constant fear thereof.

Re: Don't ban Twitter fire the IT staff

Re: Re: Don't ban Twitter fire the IT staff

Some people don't really know chain of command in government. A hot topic comes up and the head of your department who is coming up for election says "We need to stop this." no matter what proof you give them as to "no this is not the way to go about it and you have been misinformed" they will not take a no for an answer and block all *.txt files from coming into your email system as attachments....but *.exe and *.mov are just fine because there is a business reason for it...gotta get that movie of a cat flying into a ceiling fan....

The Twitter issue is real, because the 140 character universe teaches people to click on any old link, without any knowledge of where it goes. Just as Facebook is now infested with scammers and issues, twitter is also facing those same problems.

As taxpayers, we should be happy when government is at least making an effort to keep public employees from wasting their work days on social media sites.

Useless decision of the month

Oh, no! Not the office computers! If only there was some sort of a mobile, handheld device that would be able to view websites or send 140 character text messages to 21212 to post on Twitter... Oh, humanity!

banned at my work too

but on the basis of excessive bandwidth use. Twitter... bandwidth... really? Facebook, Twitter, any video site, any and all embedded flash (but not flash that's put there as a result of javascript), oh, and plenty of other actually useful sites.

"So do you test the internet qualifications of your state Senators before you vote for them in your state? We really don't 'hire' them and their ability not to fark up their computer is pretty low on the list as far as what most people look for come election time."

You're proposing that people should consider technological ability? Hah!

That's a nice and good idea but any political manager worth their salt knows the most statistically-accurate population to vote in any election falls into to categories-- the emotive uninformed and the elderly. These are the poor souls who are stuck in a comatose state in front of a TV programmed to exclusively show FoxNews at the assisted-living center.

Re: Edjewkayshun

"So do you test the internet qualifications of your state Senators before you vote for them in your state? We really don't 'hire' them and their ability not to fark up their computer is pretty low on the list as far as what most people look for come election time."

You're proposing that people should consider technological ability? Hah!

That's a nice and good idea but any political manager worth their salt knows the most statistically-active population to vote in any election likely falls into two categories-- "the elderly" and "the emotive-uninformed". These are the poor souls who are stuck in a comatose state in front of a TV programmed to exclusively show FoxNews at the assisted-living center or they have confederate flags waving in their front lawn.

Mass Leg in solidarity with Mubarak

The Egyptian government has banned further protests against the long rule of President Mubarak and shut off access to Twitter after a day of violent protests left three people dead....

The Massachusetts legislature strongly condemns irresponsible media and fully supports the restoration of law and order. Banning Twitter is more than a mere gesture, it's a forthright statement that the legislature will do its utmost to suppress insurrection.

How about a statewide ban on the internet?

How about a statewide or better yet a federal ban of the internet? There's a big world that needs to be explored. The internet is the cause of obesity. The internet is the cause of our post offices shuttering, putting postal workers out of a job. The internet is the cause of bookstores and video rentals going bankrupt including Borders, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, etc.

There's a two things that people need to do:

1. Get away from all things that are internet and computer related. Get out and excerise. Start roughing it in the Great Outdoors. Learn something nature-like.